Thanks for listening to the Best of Herd podcast. Be sure to catch us live every weekday from twelve to three eastern, nine to noon Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and FS one. Find your local station for The Herd at Fox Sports Radio dot com, or stream us live every day on the iHeartRadio app by searching Herd Now. This is the Best of the Herd with Colin Cowhern on Fox Sports Radio. Oh, welcome in on a Tuesday. Lots going on live in Los Angeles. It's the Herd wherever you may be, however you may be listening iHeartRadio, Fox Sports Radio FS one, J Mac joining me Nick Ride in one hour. You know, I was thinking this morning after our Tom Brady exclusive, a lot of things that Tom Brady talked about, and then he left our show, J Matt and he did his podcast and brought up another gym, and I think it's something you and I as dads have to go through all the time. Do you know what that is? Taking out the garbage, cleaning up dog poop, being a chauffeur to your kids. Those things ring a bill? Maybe no, So we'll start with this. Brady and Belichick very complimentary of each other on their his Let's go a podcast with Jim Gray, and there's a very interesting moment in that podcast that Brady brings something up. And I don't even know if Tom realizes how important this is. And I think we're losing a little bit of this in football. It was a key element to greatness in football. Are we losing a little bit of this element? So let's have Brady his SoundBite on his podcast talking about Bill Belichick. For me, there's nobody I'd rather be associated with. And I think that from my standpoint, I think it's always such a stupid conversation to say, you know, Brady verse Belichick, because in my mind, that's not what partnerships are about. He's not afraid to have our conversation too, And we didn't always agree, but we always respected each other. I know he respected me for the job that I did, and I certainly did the same. We had hard conversations. Is this generation of football player willing to have those or are you going to scrub your social media account because they want to franchise tag me, which, by the way, you collectively bargained, you negotiated it as players. Franchise tag is part of the negotiation you agreed to it. See guys scrubbing their social media accounts. We have elevated, especially quarterbacks and high school football players seven on seven drills, gassed up all day on social media participation trophy generation. We know that to begin with. Now you go to college, there's bidding wars tens of millions of dollars for an unproven college quarterback who was really good in high school. There's a lot of good high school quarterbacks football players. Increasingly, and I've said this, I can feel the NBA bit by bit seeping into the NFL. I love both, but they're different cultures. And there is a reason, and this is substantial, that in a sport like football, where people tackle each other, we just had a twenty year dynasty where careers last fewer than four years, we had a twenty year dynasty. In basketball, they don't tackle each other. In fact, they got rid of the hand check. You can barely brush each other, and yet dynasties last like three years. How is it possible? Because in basketball you can't have the tough conversation with your star. Warriors were walking on eggshells for every moment after the first title of the Kevin durant relationship. Belichick was barking at Brady until the very end. It lasted six seven times longer than NBA dynasties do. Now, I worry about that in a sport where, let's be honest, there's a clock on it. Sometimes on the sidelines, there's really hard conversations, and we all sort of understand that, right, But what about the hard conversations outside of the game. Kyler Murray was pandered two. Arizona is now a disaster of a franchise. Russell Wilson Denver pander two. Yeah, bring all your coaches in the building as master. Pandering doesn't work even with stars. Remember NFL MVPs don't win Super Bowls. It is a collective. It is a team. Brock Purdy at the most important position, a seventh round pick, the last guy pick got him to the NFC championship. You have to have a team. It's a collective. The quarterback needs protection from his blindside a running game, the right coordinator. Football players understand that. You go back to Troy Aikman, Jimmy Johnson, Belichick and Brady. You go back to Terry Bradshaw and Chuck Noll. Those are years of tough conversations, not just on the sidelines, in meetings, in rooms like I understand in politics and sports and business, sometimes cultures are too toxic. I mean, used to be able to grab players and slam them into the turf. That wasn't right. The NFL didn't take like concussion series sleep that wasn't right. And there are moments that have been just too insensitive in business in sports. I agree, But what I worry about is the pendulum has swung so far the other way. I wonder if Baltimore is having this very issue that Lamar Jackson and the Ravens are struggling to have a hard conversation, which is Lamar, last two years, you've been hurt. At the end of the year, you've been a bad playoff quarterback. We don't care what Cleveland played Deshaun Watson. They're a terrible franchise. The Browns have been looking up at us forever. We don't care what they do with Deshaun Watson. We think you're better than Deshaun Watson. But we're not going to let the Browns set the president. I'm not I'm not saying that the NFL shouldn't get better with concussions. I think they have even this year improved. I'm not saying the NFL shouldn't listen to players. It's not what I'm saying. It's a relationship head coaching quarterback. But I do wonder when Brady says that to Belichick, and Belichick talked back to Brady about this. They had hard conversations, like really hard conversations, not just in games all week, disagreed all the time. Tom didn't rush to scrub his social media account. Ask yourself this, why does the NBA where careers last longer. They've taken away the hard foul. They've taken away the hand check, the forearm in the back too. Dynasty's last so briefly because you can't have the hard conversation pat Riley Lebron James. Pat's like, no, we gotta have some real conversations here. Lebron didn't want him, he was out, and Lebron's great. I'm not denying that, but ask yourself, how did we have a twenty year twenty years average career three and a half four. How do we have a twenty year dynasty? The Patriots one with a great receiver. They won without great receivers. They won with a great defense, They won with good special teams. But they weren't the best team. But they were the team always willing to have hard conversations. It matters, it really does, and I worry that sometimes. That's why I love this next story. Sean Peyton yesterday. I loved every second of this. Sean Peyton yesterday, new coach of the Denver Broncos, very excited for this. Was asked by the media about Russell Wilson's personal coach being in the building. And not only do I love the answer, but Sean Payton leaves no wiggle room. There is no pause. He's rolling his eyes and shaking his head as the question is answered. Here it is Russell Wilson had a personal coach in the building with access who was on the staff. I'm not too familiar with that. How do you feel about players having their own people off the staff in the building access to play. Yeah, that's foreign to me that that's not going to take place here. I mean, I'm unfamiliar with it. But our staff will be here, our players will be here, and that'll be it. A hard conversation with Russell Wilson and by the way. It's different now because Pete Carroll had been fired twice in the NFL as a head coach and had a losing record before Russell got there. So there were a lot of people. I was one of them that said, you know, maybe Russell Wilson saved Pete Carroll's career. Then things changed. Russell left and Pete still made the playoffs and Russell was a disaster in Denver with a much better roster. Here comes Sean Payton, who won winning record with Taysom Hill, Teddy Bridgewater. Forget Drew Brees where I won a super Bowl. It's all different now. Listen, It's okay. I've seen my entire life really great quarterbacks briefly have a really bad coach, but it never looked that bad. Hell Baker Mayfield with Freddie Kitchens looked better than that. And Baker's not Russell Wilson. Justin Herbert came in with a coach that got fired and the worst offensive line in the league, thirty one touchdowns, ten picks. As a rookie, Tom Brady went to Tampa, a dysfunctional organization, won a Super Bowl in a pandemic when they had no preseason I'm not saying last year had to be great and pretty inefficient, but it was awful. It's one of the worst offenses that league history. And I know Nathaniel Hackett was over as skis. It's okay. He's probably a great guy. Been told he's a great guy. He's just not an NFL head coach. He's an NFL coordinator and maybe a great one. Maybe he'll turn the Jets offense around. But it can't look as bad as it looked in Denver. It can't be that bad. And it was awful. And so this is the classic example. No pandering by Sean Payton. He would not mince words, he would not pause, He left no wiggle room. Yeah, I'm unfamiliar with that. That won't be happening here. No pandering. It's why the NFL is king because MVPs don't win Super Bowls. It's a collective, it's a team. You coach hard, you talk hard, you make people uncomfortable. It's understood and for the record, the player almost always benefits from it. Kyler Murray needs harder coaching. Russell Wilson this year needs competent, harder coaching. Brady acknowledges I needed hard coaching. I loved hard coaching. That answer by Sean Payton was absolutely perfect. He wouldn't even acknowledge the full question. Yeah, we won't beat Nope, I'm not that's for yet. No, there's no We're not going to do that. That's exactly the way to handle it. The relationship has now changed for years and years. I thought, you know, maybe Russell's saving Pete. Then Pete made the playoffs with Gino Smith, and I watched last year coaches in the building. Too many people in the building. The NFL do not pander tough questions, hard conversations. The player for the record almost always wins. With that, Andy Reid is acknowledge on this show, he'll bark at Patrick Mahomes regularly. Be sure to catch live editions of The Herd weekdays and noon Easter nine am Pacific on Fox Sports Radio FS one and the iHeartRadio app. Kareem ap Build Jabbar. I grew up with played forever. He was the iron Man before Lebron James and Lebron's about to surpass his all time scoring record, and he was interviewed a couple of days ago on ESPN and he talked about the accomplishment still mind boggling to myself. I've never said I wanted to lead the league in scorn or for sure, I never said I wanted to be an all time leader in SCORN. I've never That's never been like a dream of mine. And to see here and actually be on the brink of it happening, this is it's pretty it's pretty crazy for me to be in the company with such a prominent dominant force like Kareem was. It's an honor. So I always viewed Bill Russell as a defensive player, even though he could score. I viewed Dennis Rodman as a rebounder and a defensive player that that was sort of his label. And then when I think of many of the great scores MJ and Kobe and Dirk Navitsky and Carmelo Anthony, I think of them as offensive players, right Karl Malone offensive players. I've never viewed Lebron as an offensive player. I've always thought he's a stronger, more athletic version of Magic Johnson, and he's going to become the top score Ever, most scorers can really define their game on one or two go to shots. Lebron doesn't have one. He doesn't have a go to move. He's not even a great perimeter shooter. He's good, he gets hot, he can be streaky, but he's very hot and cold, especially from deep. I've always thought the most amazing Lebron stat is not a professional one. It's his last two years of high school. Lebron averaged about twenty eight points a game. Is junior year in high school, so your first thought is he must have averaged fifty as a senior. No, he averaged just one point more. That's it, because Lebron's never really been about scoring. He's being completely forthright and honest here. And what's amazing is who he is surpassing. It'd be one thing if Lebron was surpassing Michael Jordan. You could make the excuse to defend MJ. Well, MJ did retire for baseball for a couple of years. M J then he retired a second time. He went to a karate team and didn't really passionately care. No, that's not what's happening here. Lebron is surpassing the iron Man of basketball before him, Kareem and Kareem had the greatest shot to this day in league history. The unblockable skyhook, which he could hit with ease in his last year, I imagine. I don't recall his last year, but I recall the end of his career. Nobody was blocking the skyhook, whereas players like Jordan at the end, or Kobe or not as vertical at the end, nobody's blocking Kareem skyhook. And he was Lebron. Before Lebron, he played forever. And I view Kareem as the greatest individual score ever with the greatest shot. The fact that he's going to blow by him is amazing to me. And I know there's a lot of critics out there. I get it, there's a lot of critics out there. But the league now is better than ever. It's now truly international. There are players playing now that we're not in the league years ago, not just because of you know, the time the generation the NBA was not an international league. It's more global, it's longer, it's faster, the coaching's better, the players are greater athletes. There's more guys that can elevate and block shots now. I know they've eliminated the hand check, and that certainly helps. I'm I'm not in any way, you know, taking that point out. I'm not I'm not eliminating that it is easier to score today than it was. But it's not like anybody was blocking Kareem. It's not like Kareem was facing a lot of peers early in his career. He was just simply bigger and more athletic than anybody else on the floor. But it's pretty remarkable to me that Lebron James, who I don't really view as a score first though he's a great score. I view MJ as a score, he could play defense. I view Kobe and Dirt as a score, Wilt as a score, Kareem as a score. I always thought Lebron was like a stronger, faster version of Magic Johnson. Both had jump shots. Don't love either. You know, Magic's jump shot was quirky looking and Lebron's he goes cold, very fast, then he activates his you know, drive to the basket game until he feels comfortable again that he goes back out to the outside and heats up again. He's bailed on his jumper multiple times in his career to go score at the basket, but it is something he doesn't have a go to shot. He's hot and cold from the perimeter, and he's a great distributor and he's going to blow past Kareem like it's something. Be sure to catch live editions of The Herd weekdays and noon Easter nine EM Pacific Field Yates. That's a great name, Field Yates. I love that name. It's a good football name too, isn't it covers football? He has the Chiefs and the Eagles. He's showing the similarity. And for our radio audience, they were both sixteen and three. They both scored five hundred forty six points, they both have six All pros, including a Kelsey, and they were both their conferences respective number one seed, and Andy Reid coached both. So the NFL's always been a copycat league. I mean, at one point, I always think this is funny. The wildcat caught on. It wasn't that long ago where you hiked the ball not to quarterback to a running back. Even New England experimented with the wildcat and they had Brady. So this league has been copying each other college football everybody looks a little different. It feels like NFL. If something works, everybody copies it. So the NFC's last two teams, the Niners and the Eagles are about great rosters. They have unconventional quarterbacks. Jalen Hurtz runs more than historic averages as a quarterback, and Brock Purdy was a seventh round last guy picked on the board. The NFC was about great rosters. The AFC's last two teams were about great quarterbacks with offensive coaches, and their rosters have some holes. So my question, if Kansas City wins the Super Bowl, does it send the message that and I think this is a strong current message in the NFL, if you have a great quarterback and a great coach, it doesn't matter about the roster. I mean last year mcvaan Stafford, they had holes in the roster, they had a great coach, quarterback was playing great, they won the Super Bowl. Cincinnati had holes all over its roster last year they had an offensive coach, good weapons, great quarterback. But if Philadelphia wins, Jason McIntyre has suggested this, does it send the message that don't pay a fortune for your quarterback. Keep drafting them and if you get a guy that's competent and you have a stacked roster, you can win in this league that way too. Just keep drafting competent quarterbacks and don't pay them anything. Because the Niners roster is only possible because they don't pay Trey Lance and they don't pay Brock Pretty and the Eagles roster is only possible because Jalen Hurts hasn't gotten the bag yet. So I do think it's something that Jason McIntyre submitted a couple of weeks ago, and it sounds crazy, like, don't worry about the quarterback, don't worry about it. Just draft one every year and eventually you'll get somebody that is competent, could be Max Dugging at TCU, and you don't have to pay him if he's competent. You got the right offensive coach, stack the roster. Jared Goff got to a super Bowl before they paid him, after they paid him, couldn't beat the Niners. So here's my question, though, is it possible that, as we view, Kansas City is great coach, great quarterback, a lot of holes, and Philadelphia just about the roster mostly the Kansas City's a little more talented than we think. So I do this before every big game. I do the top ten players. Let's go to twelve with this one, because there's so many great players in this game. The top twelve players in this game, it's only a seven to five Philadelphia advantage, and three of the first four and four of the first six are Chiefs Mahomes one, Travis Kelsey too, Jason and Kelsey. The best center in football and maybe all time is three Chris Jones, Lane Johnson, Creed Humphrey. Those guys are those are Hall of Fame level best at their position. And then it's a bunch of Eagles. A J. Brown, Hassan Reddick, who I overlooked in the NFC Championship, Jalen Hurts, Darius Slay, Joe Tuney, a guard for Kansas City, and Brandon Graham. So it's only seven to five. Now you can say, well, A J. Brown should be higher. There's a lot of good players in this game. James Bradbury's a very very good corner. Frank Clark is very good. There's a lot of good players. You get to the end of it, it's just you know, I gotta put Joe Tuney on there. He's arguably the best guard in football. He's got to make the list somewhere. And I looked overlooked Hassan Reddick and got burned for that, so I'll put him back up there. But is Kansas City better than we think? We view the Eagles as having a dominant roster, but they score the same number of points. And Kansas City had to play the Playoff Jags twice and the Playoff Chargers twice, and the Cincinnati Bengals twice and the Buffalo Bills, And I don't know, I just just a thought on that. I need to see that list again because I thought I saw Jalen Hurts somewhere around number eight. That can't possibly be right. So Jalen Hurts nine. So the guy who is the MVP favorite for most of the season, who has the second best Super Bowl outs to be MVP, Jalen Hurts, who's going to command a massive contract because how good he's been, maybe this year making a big leap from last year. He's the ninth best player in the Super Bowl. Let me ask you this. Travis Kelsey, Patrick Mahomes is arguably the greatest quarterback ever. Kelsey the greatest tight end ever, the other Kelsey, the greatest center ever. Chris Jones, the best interior lineman in the game. Lane Johnson arguably best right tackle in ten years. Creed Humphrey the second best center, although he grades as the first. AJ Brown's a top six or seven elite receiving talent. We don't consider Jalen Hurts a top five six quarterbacks laying wait a minute. He was the MVP favorite for much of the season. Oh, interesting word much I until he got hurt like thirteen, I'm saying today today, I'll give you my home at eighty percent. Well, did you watch him again in the game against that was nine days ago? Wasn't Well, I'm seeing this list is based on what I'm seeing now this I'll give you mahomes. Obviously, I'll give you Jason Kelsey. Thank you, thank you for giving me the best quarterback. I'll give you both Kelsey brothers. I can't put Chris Jones ahead of jale Hurts. I cannot Jalen Hurtle. I put Lane Johnson ahead of Chris Jones. When Lane Johnson's out the Eagles offensive line, it just falls apart Lane Johnson send position player it is Lane Johnson isn't currently healthy. Chris Jones eight Cincinnati alive. By the way, do you know what Jalen Hurt's playoff passer rating is My staff just told me. I mean in three games, ninety two of them he was hurt and one was against the Tampa Bay defense last year on the road playoffs. Two listen, Okay, okay, maybe I'm taking crazy. Best player in the game in this game. Yes, he's not one hundred percent. Hey, what's up everybody? It's me three time pro bowler Levarrington, and I couldn't be more excited to announce a podcast called Up on Game. What is Up on Game? You asked, along with my fellow pro bowler t J. Hushman's Otta and Super Bowl champion. Yep, that's right, Plexico Burrus. You can only name a show with that type of talent on it. Up on Game We're going to be sharing our real life experiences loaded with teachable moments. Listen to Up on Game with Me LeVar Arrington, t J. Hushman, Zatta and Plexico Burrs on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast from. Oh, here we go live in La hour number two. It's the herd wherever you may be listening. However you may be listening iHeart Radio, Fox Sports Radio FS one. So if a business starts to unravel and there's going to be a disaster. Now. A lot of times you have a business and it slowly erodes over time. J Mac joining us. And you know when a business slowly erodes over time, it's nobody's fault, necessarily. But cultures change, trees don't grow to the sky. Very few companies that were, you know, great companies thirty years ago. Maybe IBM is still a great company today. The world changes and it's nobody's fault. That happens all the time. It's nobody's fault. And then there are businesses that crash quickly and there's usually somebody to blame. And there's a moment when you can say, oh, remember when that happened. I'll give you an example. So when Nathaniel Hackett was named the Broncos coach, I don't want to pick on this Guy's a nice guy. His dad was a nice guy. But remember the first game against Seattle when Nathaniel Hackett as an offensive coach. It's one thing of a defensive coach. I love HERM Edwards. He was terrible with the clock in the NFL defensive coach. They butchered the clock with two two and a half minutes left. It was bad and it was like time out. Nathaniel Hackett doesn't know what he's doing. That's as bad as I've ever seen. Had no idea how to manage the clock. And it wasn't overreacting. We found out that he just really should have been a coordinator, not a head coach. Coordinators don't control the clock. The head coach does. The quarterback can. It's not usually a coordinator thing. And so there was that moment when you're like, oh, we should we should have seen that. Okay, So again, when companies over time slowly erode, it's not necessarily somebody's fault. There can be rivals, competitors, it's hard to keep pivoting and pivoting and pivoting and staying on top. But if a company crashes, there's a moment. So there's an argument to be made that k d Hardened and Kyrie was the biggest bust in league history for three stars. Now, Kobe, Nash and Dwight Howard was a mess, but Nash was at the very end of his career. Kobe wasn't far from the end of his career. That's different KDE and Kyrie when they went there, we thought they're at the end of their prime. But they're in their prime. They're still great. And Kadie was questioned at MVP in the finals and Hardened the year before he came everage thirty four. A game he was the scoring king. And it didn't work. And it didn't work for a couple of reasons. One they never played together. Remember they were never playing to somebody was always hurt. And the other thing is it didn't really fit. Kobe Nash and Dwight Howard at least made basketball sense. You had a back to the basket big, you had a prolific distributing guard and a great wing score. It made sense. Nash was old, Kobe was old. It didn't work. This one was like two ball centric guys. They're all scores. Their game is defined by points, getting a bucket. It didn't really work. It didn't work, so it crashed. But there was also a moment to this crash, and I listened to it this morning, so we knew at the time when they said it, it sounded ridiculous, but it even sounds more ridiculous today now that we know it imploded. This was an actual conversation it sounds like a Saturday Night Live piece about Kevin Durant and Kyrie saying coaches. Who needs coaches? We don't need somebody to come in and put their coaching philosophy on everything that we're doing and change up the wheel and yo, you guys need to start doing this and we start running on the first day of practice. It's just like, no, I don't really see us having a head coach, you know what I mean? Like Katie could be a head coach. I could be a head coach. Jack Vine could do it one day. It could be. It can be. It's a collaborative effort. I think on our part. No, no, it's not. Think how good the dynasty for the Warriors is and yet how many times it's had to have been tweaked. And they have really, really, really selfless players. They have Draymond's the defensive guy, steps to score, Clay defense, catch and shoot, Wiggins high intellectual player, Wing knows his role, Cavon Looney's the rebounder. Think about how great that team Andregoodalla is the smart veteran guy off the bench, provides defense and they have to tweak that thing constantly. This year has been constant tweaking, bridging older players to new players. Coaching is hard. It is, or if you don't think Eric Spoelstra's one of the reasons Miami's always viable. I don't know what to tell you. It is hard, even for great teams and great players. But when you hear that bite, now you're like, Okay, that's the moment. That's the Nathaniel Hackett can't figure out the two minute drilling football. You're like, whoa, whoa wa, whoa come on now, we don't need coaching. It's like, guys, come on, come on, I could coach. Are you kidding? Listen. One of the things I've always said about Patrick Mahomes and football and basketball are different. Patrick Mahomes likes hard coaching. He does he liked I know Andy reidwall enough. He likes hard coaching, and Andy Reid coach is hard. Like, like, what's funny is the players benefit from hard coaching. Jimmy Butler wants hard coaching. Kobe wanted hard coaching. Phil Jackson had hard conversations with Kobe and MJ player almost always benefits from it. It's not like the coach is doing something stealing minutes shots that would hurt you. Good hard coaching from smart coaches almost always benefits the player. Is this a soft millennial thing? Because we know Kyrie Irving ran in their problems with Tyron Lou very well documented. At a practice, Tyrone Lou called to play Kyrie, you know, bound past the ball to him and said, you have Labron running, it's his team. Out the door. Brad Stevens basically driven out Kyrie's like, I don't want to work with Brad Stevens. Brad Stevens ends up leaving coaching after the Kyrie saga, and then of course he runs out Steve Nash, Kyrie Irving, and Jason Kidd. Now we're going to see how that works in Dallas. Like, there's a history here, Colin at some point that has to matter over that elite layup package or his crafty handle. I know, I know the internet loves Kyrie Irving, but the history says he's just toxic. One more Herd. The Herd streams twenty four hours a day, seven days a week within the iHeartRadio app. Search Herd to listen live or on demand whenever you like. All right, let's go to Nick Wright, co host first things first. I mean, listen, you're a seasoned ticket holder to the Brooklyn Nets. You're like our on site reporter. So I mean, you tell me that SoundBite. I mean, it's easy for me to sit in the back seat, but you hear it now and you're like, oh, good God, that's absolutely ridiculous. You tell me where it all went wrong. Initially, I think it went wrong the moment Durant decided to team up with Kyrie, and not as part of teaming up with him, decide to for the first time in his career, be the true, unquestioned leader of the team. Durant well documented that he thinks that is not his job. I think he's wrong, but he thinks his job is to simply be the best basketball player possible. But that will create a leadership vacuum, and Kyrie will step into that vacuum. And what we have seen is every place he goes it ends with him having burnt it down. The twenty seventeen Calves were the best team Lebron James has ever been on, and Kyrie the final game of that season after the finals, sat at the press conference when they lost to Durant in the Warriors and the last thing he said to the media was what a blessing and a privilege it has been to play with Lebron and how he hopes to continue to play with him and learn from him over the next decade of their careers. Six weeks later, he threatened have knee surgery if they didn't trade him. He then a year later goes or goes to Boston, cuts a commercial saying he wants his jersey hung in the rafters. Six months later he is plotting with Durant to leave Boston and go to Brooklyn. In Brooklyn this summer, he said he would never leave seven meaning Kevin Durant. Eight days ago, eight days he held a press conference when he was asked about how this season similar to last season, and he said, there are no similarities because unlike last season, I'm here all the way in and three days later demanded a trade. So like that, there is one common thread here. And the Mavericks now were so desperate because they made a mistake in trading of four Porzingis. Then they made a mistake in not extending Jaylen Brunson early, and now they're worried that Luca is gonna say you gotta be kidding me, like, what are you guys doing here? So now they are, in my opinion, making a terrible bargain, which is maybe we peel a title this year, but in the long run Kyrie will burn it down there as well, either leave this summer or make the situation toxic, and that won't be good for the MAVs long term ability to keep Luka Danchich. But that is the consistent thread throughout Kyrie's entire career, which is he leaves places in shambles and he doesn't seem to recognize that he is the common threat. Is there any benefit for Kevin Durant, who, although injured a lot it feels like in the last three years, is still lethal offensively. Well, here's listen, I actually think so. I don't criticize Durant for leaving the Warriors. I know you've called it one of the biggest mistakes you know, any star players ever made, but the entirety of the media, aside from you, was basically telling him anything you do in Golden State doesn't count. Go win a real ring, go lead a team. So then he tries to go do that, and now everyone's like, why'd you leave? What are you thinking, and the answer is because you guys all said I add to. So here's what I'll say, because I am a season ticket holder, and I do actually like the pieces Brooklyn has now. They have switchable wings on defense, they have tons of shooting, they have some decent size. I like Dorian Finney Smith a lot, and I think they're going to add a backup center. I'm not sure Spencer Dinwoodie is actually gonna end up playing for the Net. I think they might make another move before the deadline. If Kevin Durant takes this team on a run, even if they don't win the title. If this is a better supporting cast then Lebron had in twenty eighteen when they went to the finals. This is a better supporting cast than Luca had last year when they went to the Western Conference finals. If Kevin Durant can as the unquestioned, to use Charles Barkley's term, bus driver, make this team viable, make this team a real threat in the Eastern Conference playoffs. To me, that is an important benchmark for him legacy wise, that even if they don't win the title. Because here's the other piece of it. There are people to this day that will argue Kevin Durant's the best player in the league. I think it's unquestionably Yannis with Luca in second colin. If this NETS roster were the exact Saint but in place of Kevin Durant, was Yannis, would one be writing that team off. The answer is no. If it was it was, if it was Janizan, Dennet Kompo and then this supporting cast. Would you say that team can win the title? I would, because you would say they have shooting, they have defense, and they have a super duperstar who can go for forty on any given night. So that is now the opportunity that sits in front of Kevin Durant when he gets back healthy. So I said earlier in the show. The remarkable thing about Lebron surpassing Kareem is Kareem was the iron Man before Lebron. If he surpassed MJ, we'd say, well, MJ retired twice, he took time off at the end, he played for a Kruddy team and didn't care. But Kareem played forever and could hit a skyhook on his last possession, and he's in his viewed as a scorer Lebron's not, and he's gonna blow past him. You know, I grew up with Kareem. Now, I don't remember the Milwaukee Kareem because that was like seventy one, and then he got traded. I started watching basketball like seventy two, seventy three. But that's remarkable to me that I don't view Lebron as a scorer. I think he's magic, but a better athlete, stronger, and a little better jumper. Be that as it may, I do find it remarkable that Iowa's viewed like, really, Kareem's record is kind of one of those nobody would beat. That's how I k of course, and if it was going to be broken, it would be broken by someone who that season was averaging nine points a game in year twenty or twenty one. Kind of limping towards the right line. Here's what. The fact that Lebron James is going to break this record in a season where he's averaging thirty points a game is unfathomable. And I would like to debunk this idea that Lebron James is not a great score. You can make a compelling argument he is the greatest score. And the argument is very simple. And you know what, let's just give greatest scorer title to Jordan. So just say Jordan's one and Lebron is two. Well, what about Kobe? Lebron literally averages more points per game than Kobe and is wildly more efficient. And I know folks will say this isn't true, but it literally is a better three point shooter than Kobe, but makes a higher percentage and of course has doubled the career buzzer beaters as Kobe on double the efficiency. When everyone says the clutch stuff is all Kobe, Kevin Durant and Lebron, they both average exactly twenty seven point three points per game for their careers, and Lebron does it at a higher efficiency. When people say Lebron is not a great scorer, what they are actually saying is he's not a pretty score. That's true that there's not as much majesty to watching him score. Yeah, you know who's one hell of a scorer? Jannis. You know how I know it because the dude averages thirty whenever he wants to. But he does it with brute force. And I do think there because when people talk about Lebron as a scorer. They say, well, he only has the one scoring title. Jordan, of course has ten. I think you can make a very compelling argument that the fact that year's nineteen and year twenty for Lebron James, he's top five scoring in the league each of those years, number two last year and averaging more than thirty points per game. Why because that's what his team demanded due to the injuries or the roster construction. That if he wanted to win the scoring title the way Jordan did all those years, he obviously could have. Instead, he was more focused on getting teammates involved in other things. But he's going to I told you this last week, but I want to reiterate it right now. There is a smaller gap in career points between Michael Jordan and Paul Pierce than there is between Michael Jordan and Lebron James. And when he finishes, He's gonna finish with forty four thousand, and Jordan's at thirty two thousand, and folks are still going to argue one guy was a better score. That's pretty well said. So I gotta ask you this, and I know this could either be one of the This could either be one of the great ten day periods of year life or Kansas City gets dusted and it's just miserable. So you live on an emotional cliff every day and you don't do yourself any favors because you're poking people in the ribs all day and so you're just begging, gambling on it. Yeah, all of it. Sure, Yeah, no problem in smoking SIGs while you're gambling and watching. So it's a lot of stuff going on. Franks, All right, Okay, here we go ahead, Chief Seagulls. Is there something in your head you're like that does worry me a little? Worries me a little about Philadelphia? Okay, listen, I think Philadelphia has I think the Chiefs have a good offensive line. I think Philadelphia has the best offensive line. The Chiefs finished this year with the second most saxon football. The Eagles finished with the most saxon football. The Chiefs, as far as great pass catchers, have one in Travis Kelsey. The Eagles have a far greater overall pass catching crew, receivers and tight ends. The Chiefs have three rookies playing corner. The Eagles have expensive veteran corners, right, so they have I think the Chiefs are good almost everywhere, or I didn't even mention the running game, where the Chiefs are starting a seventh round rookie and a journeyman and Jerick McKinnon and the Eagles have one of the most efficient running games in league history. Right. The reason I don't think it's going to matter is because I agree with you that Jalen Hurts is not yet nearly the caliber of quarterback as Patrick Mahomes. Jalen Hurts has thrown for two hundred and seventy yards total in the playoffs and has not looked great doing it. And Patrick Mahomes is the most talented football player any of us have ever seen with our own eyes, and I think this Sunday he can paint his masterpiece on one and a half feet. I think that the only thing missing from mahomes resume is a start to finish dominant Super Bowl performance, and I think that's what we get on Sunday. I think he's going to look as healthier than he did last week. I think the fact that, yes, the Chiefs lost to Super Bowl a couple of years ago, However, you were up against a quarterback who had been to nine of them previously, and a coach and Bruce Arians who had been to a Super Bowl previously, even though he had lost. Now you're up against the coach who's never been there, a quarterback who's never been there, Your offensive line isn't banged up, and for Mahomes, it would be the capstone to the greatest start to any career in the history of the sport. I understand Brady won three of them in his first five seasons starting, but he also missed the playoffs once, didn't make the conference finals another year, and never one league MVP. If Mahomes in his first five years has two League MVPs, two Super Bowl victories, makes at least the conference finals every single year, and wins two Super Bowls, makes a third, there is there is no comparison, and I think that's what we're in store for. And I know some folks believe, Oh, the Eagles might be able to run away and hide Colin. The Chiefs have played thirty two games in a row that they have either won or lost by four or fewer points, thirty two games since they were last beaten by more than four points. You're not gonna blow this team out, all right, but by the way. Part of the charm and appeal of you is the black and tans, the gambling, the putting yourself. They're black and milds. But that's fine. I appreciate that. No, I understand it makes me relatable to the audience. Can I say something very quickly, and I know you have to get to the news. This is very important. No, no, no, look no they're not cigarettes. That doesn't matter. They're cheap cigars. I offered you one at your house and you were like, does this come from Havana? If not, I don't smoke it, you brute on the ground. I want to tell you something. I have been chasing you professionally since I was in college, since before we knew each other, and then we became friends and we ended up working together, and it's been one of the great stories of my entire life, is our relationship. Six days ago, yeah, I finally thought I had something over you, and I couldn't wait to see it the Super Bowl because I got Patrick Mahomes on my TV show and you had never gotten Tom Brady on yours. And I'm like, oh man, I can't wait to see Colin on Wednesday. And then yesterday I turned on the herd and Tom Brady's there. Four days after I get mahomes and I'm like, not even this, It's unbelievable. How does this happen? It's unbelievable. You did that, you know, as your mentor, I was not going to bring it up, but I'm glad you did. It's true. It's unbelievable. Four days after I get my homes, you get Brady. I can't have nothing, man, it really is unbelievable. Thank you, Colin. All right, buddy, great seeing your though his first things first, a good friend and one of the really talented guys in this biz. Nick Wright

Thanks for listening to the Best of Herd podcast. Be sure to catch us live every weekday from twelve to three eastern, nine to noon Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and FS one. Find your local station for The Herd at Fox Sports Radio dot com, or stream us live every day on the iHeartRadio app by searching Herd Now. This is the Best of the Herd with Colin Cowhern on Fox Sports Radio. Oh, welcome in on a Tuesday. Lots going on live in Los Angeles. It's the Herd wherever you may be, however you may be listening iHeartRadio, Fox Sports Radio FS one, J Mac joining me Nick Ride in one hour. You know, I was thinking this morning after our Tom Brady exclusive, a lot of things that Tom Brady talked about, and then he left our show, J Matt and he did his podcast and brought up another gym, and I think it's something you and I as dads have to go through all the time. Do you know what that is? Taking out the garbage, cleaning up dog poop, being a chauffeur to your kids. Those things ring a bill? Maybe no, So we'll start with this. Brady and Belichick very complimentary of each other on their his Let's go a podcast with Jim Gray, and there's a very interesting moment in that podcast that Brady brings something up. And I don't even know if Tom realizes how important this is. And I think we're losing a little bit of this in football. It was a key element to greatness in football. Are we losing a little bit of this element? So let's have Brady his SoundBite on his podcast talking about Bill Belichick. For me, there's nobody I'd rather be associated with. And I think that from my standpoint, I think it's always such a stupid conversation to say, you know, Brady verse Belichick, because in my mind, that's not what partnerships are about. He's not afraid to have our conversation too, And we didn't always agree, but we always respected each other. I know he respected me for the job that I did, and I certainly did the same. We had hard conversations. Is this generation of football player willing to have those or are you going to scrub your social media account because they want to franchise tag me, which, by the way, you collectively bargained, you negotiated it as players. Franchise tag is part of the negotiation you agreed to it. See guys scrubbing their social media accounts. We have elevated, especially quarterbacks and high school football players seven on seven drills, gassed up all day on social media participation trophy generation. We know that to begin with. Now you go to college, there's bidding wars tens of millions of dollars for an unproven college quarterback who was really good in high school. There's a lot of good high school quarterbacks football players. Increasingly, and I've said this, I can feel the NBA bit by bit seeping into the NFL. I love both, but they're different cultures. And there is a reason, and this is substantial, that in a sport like football, where people tackle each other, we just had a twenty year dynasty where careers last fewer than four years, we had a twenty year dynasty. In basketball, they don't tackle each other. In fact, they got rid of the hand check. You can barely brush each other, and yet dynasties last like three years. How is it possible? Because in basketball you can't have the tough conversation with your star. Warriors were walking on eggshells for every moment after the first title of the Kevin durant relationship. Belichick was barking at Brady until the very end. It lasted six seven times longer than NBA dynasties do. Now, I worry about that in a sport where, let's be honest, there's a clock on it. Sometimes on the sidelines, there's really hard conversations, and we all sort of understand that, right, But what about the hard conversations outside of the game. Kyler Murray was pandered two. Arizona is now a disaster of a franchise. Russell Wilson Denver pander two. Yeah, bring all your coaches in the building as master. Pandering doesn't work even with stars. Remember NFL MVPs don't win Super Bowls. It is a collective. It is a team. Brock Purdy at the most important position, a seventh round pick, the last guy pick got him to the NFC championship. You have to have a team. It's a collective. The quarterback needs protection from his blindside a running game, the right coordinator. Football players understand that. You go back to Troy Aikman, Jimmy Johnson, Belichick and Brady. You go back to Terry Bradshaw and Chuck Noll. Those are years of tough conversations, not just on the sidelines, in meetings, in rooms like I understand in politics and sports and business, sometimes cultures are too toxic. I mean, used to be able to grab players and slam them into the turf. That wasn't right. The NFL didn't take like concussion series sleep that wasn't right. And there are moments that have been just too insensitive in business in sports. I agree, But what I worry about is the pendulum has swung so far the other way. I wonder if Baltimore is having this very issue that Lamar Jackson and the Ravens are struggling to have a hard conversation, which is Lamar, last two years, you've been hurt. At the end of the year, you've been a bad playoff quarterback. We don't care what Cleveland played Deshaun Watson. They're a terrible franchise. The Browns have been looking up at us forever. We don't care what they do with Deshaun Watson. We think you're better than Deshaun Watson. But we're not going to let the Browns set the president. I'm not I'm not saying that the NFL shouldn't get better with concussions. I think they have even this year improved. I'm not saying the NFL shouldn't listen to players. It's not what I'm saying. It's a relationship head coaching quarterback. But I do wonder when Brady says that to Belichick, and Belichick talked back to Brady about this. They had hard conversations, like really hard conversations, not just in games all week, disagreed all the time. Tom didn't rush to scrub his social media account. Ask yourself this, why does the NBA where careers last longer. They've taken away the hard foul. They've taken away the hand check, the forearm in the back too. Dynasty's last so briefly because you can't have the hard conversation pat Riley Lebron James. Pat's like, no, we gotta have some real conversations here. Lebron didn't want him, he was out, and Lebron's great. I'm not denying that, but ask yourself, how did we have a twenty year twenty years average career three and a half four. How do we have a twenty year dynasty? The Patriots one with a great receiver. They won without great receivers. They won with a great defense, They won with good special teams. But they weren't the best team. But they were the team always willing to have hard conversations. It matters, it really does, and I worry that sometimes. That's why I love this next story. Sean Peyton yesterday. I loved every second of this. Sean Peyton yesterday, new coach of the Denver Broncos, very excited for this. Was asked by the media about Russell Wilson's personal coach being in the building. And not only do I love the answer, but Sean Payton leaves no wiggle room. There is no pause. He's rolling his eyes and shaking his head as the question is answered. Here it is Russell Wilson had a personal coach in the building with access who was on the staff. I'm not too familiar with that. How do you feel about players having their own people off the staff in the building access to play. Yeah, that's foreign to me that that's not going to take place here. I mean, I'm unfamiliar with it. But our staff will be here, our players will be here, and that'll be it. A hard conversation with Russell Wilson and by the way. It's different now because Pete Carroll had been fired twice in the NFL as a head coach and had a losing record before Russell got there. So there were a lot of people. I was one of them that said, you know, maybe Russell Wilson saved Pete Carroll's career. Then things changed. Russell left and Pete still made the playoffs and Russell was a disaster in Denver with a much better roster. Here comes Sean Payton, who won winning record with Taysom Hill, Teddy Bridgewater. Forget Drew Brees where I won a super Bowl. It's all different now. Listen, It's okay. I've seen my entire life really great quarterbacks briefly have a really bad coach, but it never looked that bad. Hell Baker Mayfield with Freddie Kitchens looked better than that. And Baker's not Russell Wilson. Justin Herbert came in with a coach that got fired and the worst offensive line in the league, thirty one touchdowns, ten picks. As a rookie, Tom Brady went to Tampa, a dysfunctional organization, won a Super Bowl in a pandemic when they had no preseason I'm not saying last year had to be great and pretty inefficient, but it was awful. It's one of the worst offenses that league history. And I know Nathaniel Hackett was over as skis. It's okay. He's probably a great guy. Been told he's a great guy. He's just not an NFL head coach. He's an NFL coordinator and maybe a great one. Maybe he'll turn the Jets offense around. But it can't look as bad as it looked in Denver. It can't be that bad. And it was awful. And so this is the classic example. No pandering by Sean Payton. He would not mince words, he would not pause, He left no wiggle room. Yeah, I'm unfamiliar with that. That won't be happening here. No pandering. It's why the NFL is king because MVPs don't win Super Bowls. It's a collective, it's a team. You coach hard, you talk hard, you make people uncomfortable. It's understood and for the record, the player almost always benefits from it. Kyler Murray needs harder coaching. Russell Wilson this year needs competent, harder coaching. Brady acknowledges I needed hard coaching. I loved hard coaching. That answer by Sean Payton was absolutely perfect. He wouldn't even acknowledge the full question. Yeah, we won't beat Nope, I'm not that's for yet. No, there's no We're not going to do that. That's exactly the way to handle it. The relationship has now changed for years and years. I thought, you know, maybe Russell's saving Pete. Then Pete made the playoffs with Gino Smith, and I watched last year coaches in the building. Too many people in the building. The NFL do not pander tough questions, hard conversations. The player for the record almost always wins. With that, Andy Reid is acknowledge on this show, he'll bark at Patrick Mahomes regularly. Be sure to catch live editions of The Herd weekdays and noon Easter nine am Pacific on Fox Sports Radio FS one and the iHeartRadio app. Kareem ap Build Jabbar. I grew up with played forever. He was the iron Man before Lebron James and Lebron's about to surpass his all time scoring record, and he was interviewed a couple of days ago on ESPN and he talked about the accomplishment still mind boggling to myself. I've never said I wanted to lead the league in scorn or for sure, I never said I wanted to be an all time leader in SCORN. I've never That's never been like a dream of mine. And to see here and actually be on the brink of it happening, this is it's pretty it's pretty crazy for me to be in the company with such a prominent dominant force like Kareem was. It's an honor. So I always viewed Bill Russell as a defensive player, even though he could score. I viewed Dennis Rodman as a rebounder and a defensive player that that was sort of his label. And then when I think of many of the great scores MJ and Kobe and Dirk Navitsky and Carmelo Anthony, I think of them as offensive players, right Karl Malone offensive players. I've never viewed Lebron as an offensive player. I've always thought he's a stronger, more athletic version of Magic Johnson, and he's going to become the top score Ever, most scorers can really define their game on one or two go to shots. Lebron doesn't have one. He doesn't have a go to move. He's not even a great perimeter shooter. He's good, he gets hot, he can be streaky, but he's very hot and cold, especially from deep. I've always thought the most amazing Lebron stat is not a professional one. It's his last two years of high school. Lebron averaged about twenty eight points a game. Is junior year in high school, so your first thought is he must have averaged fifty as a senior. No, he averaged just one point more. That's it, because Lebron's never really been about scoring. He's being completely forthright and honest here. And what's amazing is who he is surpassing. It'd be one thing if Lebron was surpassing Michael Jordan. You could make the excuse to defend MJ. Well, MJ did retire for baseball for a couple of years. M J then he retired a second time. He went to a karate team and didn't really passionately care. No, that's not what's happening here. Lebron is surpassing the iron Man of basketball before him, Kareem and Kareem had the greatest shot to this day in league history. The unblockable skyhook, which he could hit with ease in his last year, I imagine. I don't recall his last year, but I recall the end of his career. Nobody was blocking the skyhook, whereas players like Jordan at the end, or Kobe or not as vertical at the end, nobody's blocking Kareem skyhook. And he was Lebron. Before Lebron, he played forever. And I view Kareem as the greatest individual score ever with the greatest shot. The fact that he's going to blow by him is amazing to me. And I know there's a lot of critics out there. I get it, there's a lot of critics out there. But the league now is better than ever. It's now truly international. There are players playing now that we're not in the league years ago, not just because of you know, the time the generation the NBA was not an international league. It's more global, it's longer, it's faster, the coaching's better, the players are greater athletes. There's more guys that can elevate and block shots now. I know they've eliminated the hand check, and that certainly helps. I'm I'm not in any way, you know, taking that point out. I'm not I'm not eliminating that it is easier to score today than it was. But it's not like anybody was blocking Kareem. It's not like Kareem was facing a lot of peers early in his career. He was just simply bigger and more athletic than anybody else on the floor. But it's pretty remarkable to me that Lebron James, who I don't really view as a score first though he's a great score. I view MJ as a score, he could play defense. I view Kobe and Dirt as a score, Wilt as a score, Kareem as a score. I always thought Lebron was like a stronger, faster version of Magic Johnson. Both had jump shots. Don't love either. You know, Magic's jump shot was quirky looking and Lebron's he goes cold, very fast, then he activates his you know, drive to the basket game until he feels comfortable again that he goes back out to the outside and heats up again. He's bailed on his jumper multiple times in his career to go score at the basket, but it is something he doesn't have a go to shot. He's hot and cold from the perimeter, and he's a great distributor and he's going to blow past Kareem like it's something. Be sure to catch live editions of The Herd weekdays and noon Easter nine EM Pacific Field Yates. That's a great name, Field Yates. I love that name. It's a good football name too, isn't it covers football? He has the Chiefs and the Eagles. He's showing the similarity. And for our radio audience, they were both sixteen and three. They both scored five hundred forty six points, they both have six All pros, including a Kelsey, and they were both their conferences respective number one seed, and Andy Reid coached both. So the NFL's always been a copycat league. I mean, at one point, I always think this is funny. The wildcat caught on. It wasn't that long ago where you hiked the ball not to quarterback to a running back. Even New England experimented with the wildcat and they had Brady. So this league has been copying each other college football everybody looks a little different. It feels like NFL. If something works, everybody copies it. So the NFC's last two teams, the Niners and the Eagles are about great rosters. They have unconventional quarterbacks. Jalen Hurtz runs more than historic averages as a quarterback, and Brock Purdy was a seventh round last guy picked on the board. The NFC was about great rosters. The AFC's last two teams were about great quarterbacks with offensive coaches, and their rosters have some holes. So my question, if Kansas City wins the Super Bowl, does it send the message that and I think this is a strong current message in the NFL, if you have a great quarterback and a great coach, it doesn't matter about the roster. I mean last year mcvaan Stafford, they had holes in the roster, they had a great coach, quarterback was playing great, they won the Super Bowl. Cincinnati had holes all over its roster last year they had an offensive coach, good weapons, great quarterback. But if Philadelphia wins, Jason McIntyre has suggested this, does it send the message that don't pay a fortune for your quarterback. Keep drafting them and if you get a guy that's competent and you have a stacked roster, you can win in this league that way too. Just keep drafting competent quarterbacks and don't pay them anything. Because the Niners roster is only possible because they don't pay Trey Lance and they don't pay Brock Pretty and the Eagles roster is only possible because Jalen Hurts hasn't gotten the bag yet. So I do think it's something that Jason McIntyre submitted a couple of weeks ago, and it sounds crazy, like, don't worry about the quarterback, don't worry about it. Just draft one every year and eventually you'll get somebody that is competent, could be Max Dugging at TCU, and you don't have to pay him if he's competent. You got the right offensive coach, stack the roster. Jared Goff got to a super Bowl before they paid him, after they paid him, couldn't beat the Niners. So here's my question, though, is it possible that, as we view, Kansas City is great coach, great quarterback, a lot of holes, and Philadelphia just about the roster mostly the Kansas City's a little more talented than we think. So I do this before every big game. I do the top ten players. Let's go to twelve with this one, because there's so many great players in this game. The top twelve players in this game, it's only a seven to five Philadelphia advantage, and three of the first four and four of the first six are Chiefs Mahomes one, Travis Kelsey too, Jason and Kelsey. The best center in football and maybe all time is three Chris Jones, Lane Johnson, Creed Humphrey. Those guys are those are Hall of Fame level best at their position. And then it's a bunch of Eagles. A J. Brown, Hassan Reddick, who I overlooked in the NFC Championship, Jalen Hurts, Darius Slay, Joe Tuney, a guard for Kansas City, and Brandon Graham. So it's only seven to five. Now you can say, well, A J. Brown should be higher. There's a lot of good players in this game. James Bradbury's a very very good corner. Frank Clark is very good. There's a lot of good players. You get to the end of it, it's just you know, I gotta put Joe Tuney on there. He's arguably the best guard in football. He's got to make the list somewhere. And I looked overlooked Hassan Reddick and got burned for that, so I'll put him back up there. But is Kansas City better than we think? We view the Eagles as having a dominant roster, but they score the same number of points. And Kansas City had to play the Playoff Jags twice and the Playoff Chargers twice, and the Cincinnati Bengals twice and the Buffalo Bills, And I don't know, I just just a thought on that. I need to see that list again because I thought I saw Jalen Hurts somewhere around number eight. That can't possibly be right. So Jalen Hurts nine. So the guy who is the MVP favorite for most of the season, who has the second best Super Bowl outs to be MVP, Jalen Hurts, who's going to command a massive contract because how good he's been, maybe this year making a big leap from last year. He's the ninth best player in the Super Bowl. Let me ask you this. Travis Kelsey, Patrick Mahomes is arguably the greatest quarterback ever. Kelsey the greatest tight end ever, the other Kelsey, the greatest center ever. Chris Jones, the best interior lineman in the game. Lane Johnson arguably best right tackle in ten years. Creed Humphrey the second best center, although he grades as the first. AJ Brown's a top six or seven elite receiving talent. We don't consider Jalen Hurts a top five six quarterbacks laying wait a minute. He was the MVP favorite for much of the season. Oh, interesting word much I until he got hurt like thirteen, I'm saying today today, I'll give you my home at eighty percent. Well, did you watch him again in the game against that was nine days ago? Wasn't Well, I'm seeing this list is based on what I'm seeing now this I'll give you mahomes. Obviously, I'll give you Jason Kelsey. Thank you, thank you for giving me the best quarterback. I'll give you both Kelsey brothers. I can't put Chris Jones ahead of jale Hurts. I cannot Jalen Hurtle. I put Lane Johnson ahead of Chris Jones. When Lane Johnson's out the Eagles offensive line, it just falls apart Lane Johnson send position player it is Lane Johnson isn't currently healthy. Chris Jones eight Cincinnati alive. By the way, do you know what Jalen Hurt's playoff passer rating is My staff just told me. I mean in three games, ninety two of them he was hurt and one was against the Tampa Bay defense last year on the road playoffs. Two listen, Okay, okay, maybe I'm taking crazy. Best player in the game in this game. Yes, he's not one hundred percent. Hey, what's up everybody? It's me three time pro bowler Levarrington, and I couldn't be more excited to announce a podcast called Up on Game. What is Up on Game? You asked, along with my fellow pro bowler t J. Hushman's Otta and Super Bowl champion. Yep, that's right, Plexico Burrus. You can only name a show with that type of talent on it. Up on Game We're going to be sharing our real life experiences loaded with teachable moments. Listen to Up on Game with Me LeVar Arrington, t J. Hushman, Zatta and Plexico Burrs on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast from. Oh, here we go live in La hour number two. It's the herd wherever you may be listening. However you may be listening iHeart Radio, Fox Sports Radio FS one. So if a business starts to unravel and there's going to be a disaster. Now. A lot of times you have a business and it slowly erodes over time. J Mac joining us. And you know when a business slowly erodes over time, it's nobody's fault, necessarily. But cultures change, trees don't grow to the sky. Very few companies that were, you know, great companies thirty years ago. Maybe IBM is still a great company today. The world changes and it's nobody's fault. That happens all the time. It's nobody's fault. And then there are businesses that crash quickly and there's usually somebody to blame. And there's a moment when you can say, oh, remember when that happened. I'll give you an example. So when Nathaniel Hackett was named the Broncos coach, I don't want to pick on this Guy's a nice guy. His dad was a nice guy. But remember the first game against Seattle when Nathaniel Hackett as an offensive coach. It's one thing of a defensive coach. I love HERM Edwards. He was terrible with the clock in the NFL defensive coach. They butchered the clock with two two and a half minutes left. It was bad and it was like time out. Nathaniel Hackett doesn't know what he's doing. That's as bad as I've ever seen. Had no idea how to manage the clock. And it wasn't overreacting. We found out that he just really should have been a coordinator, not a head coach. Coordinators don't control the clock. The head coach does. The quarterback can. It's not usually a coordinator thing. And so there was that moment when you're like, oh, we should we should have seen that. Okay, So again, when companies over time slowly erode, it's not necessarily somebody's fault. There can be rivals, competitors, it's hard to keep pivoting and pivoting and pivoting and staying on top. But if a company crashes, there's a moment. So there's an argument to be made that k d Hardened and Kyrie was the biggest bust in league history for three stars. Now, Kobe, Nash and Dwight Howard was a mess, but Nash was at the very end of his career. Kobe wasn't far from the end of his career. That's different KDE and Kyrie when they went there, we thought they're at the end of their prime. But they're in their prime. They're still great. And Kadie was questioned at MVP in the finals and Hardened the year before he came everage thirty four. A game he was the scoring king. And it didn't work. And it didn't work for a couple of reasons. One they never played together. Remember they were never playing to somebody was always hurt. And the other thing is it didn't really fit. Kobe Nash and Dwight Howard at least made basketball sense. You had a back to the basket big, you had a prolific distributing guard and a great wing score. It made sense. Nash was old, Kobe was old. It didn't work. This one was like two ball centric guys. They're all scores. Their game is defined by points, getting a bucket. It didn't really work. It didn't work, so it crashed. But there was also a moment to this crash, and I listened to it this morning, so we knew at the time when they said it, it sounded ridiculous, but it even sounds more ridiculous today now that we know it imploded. This was an actual conversation it sounds like a Saturday Night Live piece about Kevin Durant and Kyrie saying coaches. Who needs coaches? We don't need somebody to come in and put their coaching philosophy on everything that we're doing and change up the wheel and yo, you guys need to start doing this and we start running on the first day of practice. It's just like, no, I don't really see us having a head coach, you know what I mean? Like Katie could be a head coach. I could be a head coach. Jack Vine could do it one day. It could be. It can be. It's a collaborative effort. I think on our part. No, no, it's not. Think how good the dynasty for the Warriors is and yet how many times it's had to have been tweaked. And they have really, really, really selfless players. They have Draymond's the defensive guy, steps to score, Clay defense, catch and shoot, Wiggins high intellectual player, Wing knows his role, Cavon Looney's the rebounder. Think about how great that team Andregoodalla is the smart veteran guy off the bench, provides defense and they have to tweak that thing constantly. This year has been constant tweaking, bridging older players to new players. Coaching is hard. It is, or if you don't think Eric Spoelstra's one of the reasons Miami's always viable. I don't know what to tell you. It is hard, even for great teams and great players. But when you hear that bite, now you're like, Okay, that's the moment. That's the Nathaniel Hackett can't figure out the two minute drilling football. You're like, whoa, whoa wa, whoa come on now, we don't need coaching. It's like, guys, come on, come on, I could coach. Are you kidding? Listen. One of the things I've always said about Patrick Mahomes and football and basketball are different. Patrick Mahomes likes hard coaching. He does he liked I know Andy reidwall enough. He likes hard coaching, and Andy Reid coach is hard. Like, like, what's funny is the players benefit from hard coaching. Jimmy Butler wants hard coaching. Kobe wanted hard coaching. Phil Jackson had hard conversations with Kobe and MJ player almost always benefits from it. It's not like the coach is doing something stealing minutes shots that would hurt you. Good hard coaching from smart coaches almost always benefits the player. Is this a soft millennial thing? Because we know Kyrie Irving ran in their problems with Tyron Lou very well documented. At a practice, Tyrone Lou called to play Kyrie, you know, bound past the ball to him and said, you have Labron running, it's his team. Out the door. Brad Stevens basically driven out Kyrie's like, I don't want to work with Brad Stevens. Brad Stevens ends up leaving coaching after the Kyrie saga, and then of course he runs out Steve Nash, Kyrie Irving, and Jason Kidd. Now we're going to see how that works in Dallas. Like, there's a history here, Colin at some point that has to matter over that elite layup package or his crafty handle. I know, I know the internet loves Kyrie Irving, but the history says he's just toxic. One more Herd. The Herd streams twenty four hours a day, seven days a week within the iHeartRadio app. Search Herd to listen live or on demand whenever you like. All right, let's go to Nick Wright, co host first things first. I mean, listen, you're a seasoned ticket holder to the Brooklyn Nets. You're like our on site reporter. So I mean, you tell me that SoundBite. I mean, it's easy for me to sit in the back seat, but you hear it now and you're like, oh, good God, that's absolutely ridiculous. You tell me where it all went wrong. Initially, I think it went wrong the moment Durant decided to team up with Kyrie, and not as part of teaming up with him, decide to for the first time in his career, be the true, unquestioned leader of the team. Durant well documented that he thinks that is not his job. I think he's wrong, but he thinks his job is to simply be the best basketball player possible. But that will create a leadership vacuum, and Kyrie will step into that vacuum. And what we have seen is every place he goes it ends with him having burnt it down. The twenty seventeen Calves were the best team Lebron James has ever been on, and Kyrie the final game of that season after the finals, sat at the press conference when they lost to Durant in the Warriors and the last thing he said to the media was what a blessing and a privilege it has been to play with Lebron and how he hopes to continue to play with him and learn from him over the next decade of their careers. Six weeks later, he threatened have knee surgery if they didn't trade him. He then a year later goes or goes to Boston, cuts a commercial saying he wants his jersey hung in the rafters. Six months later he is plotting with Durant to leave Boston and go to Brooklyn. In Brooklyn this summer, he said he would never leave seven meaning Kevin Durant. Eight days ago, eight days he held a press conference when he was asked about how this season similar to last season, and he said, there are no similarities because unlike last season, I'm here all the way in and three days later demanded a trade. So like that, there is one common thread here. And the Mavericks now were so desperate because they made a mistake in trading of four Porzingis. Then they made a mistake in not extending Jaylen Brunson early, and now they're worried that Luca is gonna say you gotta be kidding me, like, what are you guys doing here? So now they are, in my opinion, making a terrible bargain, which is maybe we peel a title this year, but in the long run Kyrie will burn it down there as well, either leave this summer or make the situation toxic, and that won't be good for the MAVs long term ability to keep Luka Danchich. But that is the consistent thread throughout Kyrie's entire career, which is he leaves places in shambles and he doesn't seem to recognize that he is the common threat. Is there any benefit for Kevin Durant, who, although injured a lot it feels like in the last three years, is still lethal offensively. Well, here's listen, I actually think so. I don't criticize Durant for leaving the Warriors. I know you've called it one of the biggest mistakes you know, any star players ever made, but the entirety of the media, aside from you, was basically telling him anything you do in Golden State doesn't count. Go win a real ring, go lead a team. So then he tries to go do that, and now everyone's like, why'd you leave? What are you thinking, and the answer is because you guys all said I add to. So here's what I'll say, because I am a season ticket holder, and I do actually like the pieces Brooklyn has now. They have switchable wings on defense, they have tons of shooting, they have some decent size. I like Dorian Finney Smith a lot, and I think they're going to add a backup center. I'm not sure Spencer Dinwoodie is actually gonna end up playing for the Net. I think they might make another move before the deadline. If Kevin Durant takes this team on a run, even if they don't win the title. If this is a better supporting cast then Lebron had in twenty eighteen when they went to the finals. This is a better supporting cast than Luca had last year when they went to the Western Conference finals. If Kevin Durant can as the unquestioned, to use Charles Barkley's term, bus driver, make this team viable, make this team a real threat in the Eastern Conference playoffs. To me, that is an important benchmark for him legacy wise, that even if they don't win the title. Because here's the other piece of it. There are people to this day that will argue Kevin Durant's the best player in the league. I think it's unquestionably Yannis with Luca in second colin. If this NETS roster were the exact Saint but in place of Kevin Durant, was Yannis, would one be writing that team off. The answer is no. If it was it was, if it was Janizan, Dennet Kompo and then this supporting cast. Would you say that team can win the title? I would, because you would say they have shooting, they have defense, and they have a super duperstar who can go for forty on any given night. So that is now the opportunity that sits in front of Kevin Durant when he gets back healthy. So I said earlier in the show. The remarkable thing about Lebron surpassing Kareem is Kareem was the iron Man before Lebron. If he surpassed MJ, we'd say, well, MJ retired twice, he took time off at the end, he played for a Kruddy team and didn't care. But Kareem played forever and could hit a skyhook on his last possession, and he's in his viewed as a scorer Lebron's not, and he's gonna blow past him. You know, I grew up with Kareem. Now, I don't remember the Milwaukee Kareem because that was like seventy one, and then he got traded. I started watching basketball like seventy two, seventy three. But that's remarkable to me that I don't view Lebron as a scorer. I think he's magic, but a better athlete, stronger, and a little better jumper. Be that as it may, I do find it remarkable that Iowa's viewed like, really, Kareem's record is kind of one of those nobody would beat. That's how I k of course, and if it was going to be broken, it would be broken by someone who that season was averaging nine points a game in year twenty or twenty one. Kind of limping towards the right line. Here's what. The fact that Lebron James is going to break this record in a season where he's averaging thirty points a game is unfathomable. And I would like to debunk this idea that Lebron James is not a great score. You can make a compelling argument he is the greatest score. And the argument is very simple. And you know what, let's just give greatest scorer title to Jordan. So just say Jordan's one and Lebron is two. Well, what about Kobe? Lebron literally averages more points per game than Kobe and is wildly more efficient. And I know folks will say this isn't true, but it literally is a better three point shooter than Kobe, but makes a higher percentage and of course has doubled the career buzzer beaters as Kobe on double the efficiency. When everyone says the clutch stuff is all Kobe, Kevin Durant and Lebron, they both average exactly twenty seven point three points per game for their careers, and Lebron does it at a higher efficiency. When people say Lebron is not a great scorer, what they are actually saying is he's not a pretty score. That's true that there's not as much majesty to watching him score. Yeah, you know who's one hell of a scorer? Jannis. You know how I know it because the dude averages thirty whenever he wants to. But he does it with brute force. And I do think there because when people talk about Lebron as a scorer. They say, well, he only has the one scoring title. Jordan, of course has ten. I think you can make a very compelling argument that the fact that year's nineteen and year twenty for Lebron James, he's top five scoring in the league each of those years, number two last year and averaging more than thirty points per game. Why because that's what his team demanded due to the injuries or the roster construction. That if he wanted to win the scoring title the way Jordan did all those years, he obviously could have. Instead, he was more focused on getting teammates involved in other things. But he's going to I told you this last week, but I want to reiterate it right now. There is a smaller gap in career points between Michael Jordan and Paul Pierce than there is between Michael Jordan and Lebron James. And when he finishes, He's gonna finish with forty four thousand, and Jordan's at thirty two thousand, and folks are still going to argue one guy was a better score. That's pretty well said. So I gotta ask you this, and I know this could either be one of the This could either be one of the great ten day periods of year life or Kansas City gets dusted and it's just miserable. So you live on an emotional cliff every day and you don't do yourself any favors because you're poking people in the ribs all day and so you're just begging, gambling on it. Yeah, all of it. Sure, Yeah, no problem in smoking SIGs while you're gambling and watching. So it's a lot of stuff going on. Franks, All right, Okay, here we go ahead, Chief Seagulls. Is there something in your head you're like that does worry me a little? Worries me a little about Philadelphia? Okay, listen, I think Philadelphia has I think the Chiefs have a good offensive line. I think Philadelphia has the best offensive line. The Chiefs finished this year with the second most saxon football. The Eagles finished with the most saxon football. The Chiefs, as far as great pass catchers, have one in Travis Kelsey. The Eagles have a far greater overall pass catching crew, receivers and tight ends. The Chiefs have three rookies playing corner. The Eagles have expensive veteran corners, right, so they have I think the Chiefs are good almost everywhere, or I didn't even mention the running game, where the Chiefs are starting a seventh round rookie and a journeyman and Jerick McKinnon and the Eagles have one of the most efficient running games in league history. Right. The reason I don't think it's going to matter is because I agree with you that Jalen Hurts is not yet nearly the caliber of quarterback as Patrick Mahomes. Jalen Hurts has thrown for two hundred and seventy yards total in the playoffs and has not looked great doing it. And Patrick Mahomes is the most talented football player any of us have ever seen with our own eyes, and I think this Sunday he can paint his masterpiece on one and a half feet. I think that the only thing missing from mahomes resume is a start to finish dominant Super Bowl performance, and I think that's what we get on Sunday. I think he's going to look as healthier than he did last week. I think the fact that, yes, the Chiefs lost to Super Bowl a couple of years ago, However, you were up against a quarterback who had been to nine of them previously, and a coach and Bruce Arians who had been to a Super Bowl previously, even though he had lost. Now you're up against the coach who's never been there, a quarterback who's never been there, Your offensive line isn't banged up, and for Mahomes, it would be the capstone to the greatest start to any career in the history of the sport. I understand Brady won three of them in his first five seasons starting, but he also missed the playoffs once, didn't make the conference finals another year, and never one league MVP. If Mahomes in his first five years has two League MVPs, two Super Bowl victories, makes at least the conference finals every single year, and wins two Super Bowls, makes a third, there is there is no comparison, and I think that's what we're in store for. And I know some folks believe, Oh, the Eagles might be able to run away and hide Colin. The Chiefs have played thirty two games in a row that they have either won or lost by four or fewer points, thirty two games since they were last beaten by more than four points. You're not gonna blow this team out, all right, but by the way. Part of the charm and appeal of you is the black and tans, the gambling, the putting yourself. They're black and milds. But that's fine. I appreciate that. No, I understand it makes me relatable to the audience. Can I say something very quickly, and I know you have to get to the news. This is very important. No, no, no, look no they're not cigarettes. That doesn't matter. They're cheap cigars. I offered you one at your house and you were like, does this come from Havana? If not, I don't smoke it, you brute on the ground. I want to tell you something. I have been chasing you professionally since I was in college, since before we knew each other, and then we became friends and we ended up working together, and it's been one of the great stories of my entire life, is our relationship. Six days ago, yeah, I finally thought I had something over you, and I couldn't wait to see it the Super Bowl because I got Patrick Mahomes on my TV show and you had never gotten Tom Brady on yours. And I'm like, oh man, I can't wait to see Colin on Wednesday. And then yesterday I turned on the herd and Tom Brady's there. Four days after I get mahomes and I'm like, not even this, It's unbelievable. How does this happen? It's unbelievable. You did that, you know, as your mentor, I was not going to bring it up, but I'm glad you did. It's true. It's unbelievable. Four days after I get my homes, you get Brady. I can't have nothing, man, it really is unbelievable. Thank you, Colin. All right, buddy, great seeing your though his first things first, a good friend and one of the really talented guys in this biz. Nick Wright